In 1922, oil was discovered on the Navajo Reservation. Standard Oil of California wanted access to the oil, but the U.S. government, as trustee, could not legally lease the Navajo land, without tribal consent, and there was not tribal entity that could legally sign. The Navajo Tribe had no governing body, and leadership was decentralized among many different local headmen. The U.S. government called a meeting of influential headmen to the San Juan Agency on May 1922 to lease the land, yet the headmen rejected all leasing applications. Therefore, the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall of New Mexico, invented a series of legal fictions to facilitate oil leasing. He created a Navajo "Business Council" of 3 Council members to sign and approve the oil leases on the Navajo Reservation. This was the beginning of the Navajo Tribal Council.

In 1923, the Navajo Tribal Council was legally formed. The U.S. government made an effort to organize a more representative Navajo Tribal Council for purposes of mineral leasing. B.I.A. superintendents supervised the election of delegates from a larger geographical area on the Navajo Reservation to sit in what would be called the Navajo Tribal Council. The new council authorized the interior official (Hagerman) to negotiate all future oil and gas leases. The question of Indian rights to revenues from oil and gas leases raised issues of Indian title to the land itself, and formed the basis of a new round of land struggles.

In the 1930s, the Navajo Tribal Council was organized with a membership of 12 delegates and 12 alternates. This body was also organized under rules written and authorized by the Secretary of Interior. These rules became the first governing laws of the Navajo Tribe.

The present laws of the Navajo Nation are contained in the Navajo Tribal Code book containing more the 24 sections.

On December 15, 1989, the Navajo Nation Council amended the Navajo Tribal Code to begin to gradually take back essential powers of self-government.

Today, the Navajo Nation has the country's largest tribal government body. It is governed by 88 tribal council members, elected every four years by popular vote by the Navajo people on and off the reservation.

Below, is a list of Navajo Nation Council delegates for the years 1999 - 2003.